


Secrets like blood or ink

by coslyons



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Religious Content, poet!Ronan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5066464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coslyons/pseuds/coslyons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall Lynch was a man of many secrets and contradictions.<br/>When exploring his father's office at the Barns, Ronan discovers that his father was also a poet.</p><p>Ronan tries to understand his father (and himself) a little bit better by writing poetry of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets like blood or ink

**Author's Note:**

> The poem in Latin was written by my friend [adamparrishisbi](http://www.adamparrishisbi.tumblr.com).  
> All other poems were written by me.  
> Beta read by [mythaelogy](http://www.mythaelogy.tumblr.com).  
> Characters are not mine, despite the fact that I keep writing them as if they're me.
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [questionabledivinity](http://www.questionabledivinity.tumblr.com).

Stacks of tattered spiral notebooks clutter the shelves of Niall’s office. They seemed incongruous with the rest of the room. Their plain pages contrasted starkly with the rich wood furniture, the beautiful leather-bound books, the expensive paintings. This strangeness would have made Ronan uncomfortable had he not _already_ been uncomfortable.

Growing up in the Barns, there were only two rules. The first was to not take strangers home. This rule grew more and more lax as the years went on. Niall was a personable man who became acquainted with others easily. He passed this trait down to each of his sons, and so there really were no strangers in the world, only friends that had yet to be met.

The second rule, however, was the one that was never broken under any circumstances: Niall’s office was strictly off limits. Ronan recalled the many days of his childhood spent sitting outside the tightly shut door, trying to convince his father to come out to play with him. He remembered the crushing disappointment at being ignored.

He knew now, though, that this was the room where his father dreamed. The careworn daybed with its soft blankets and paper thin sheets was evidence of that. That all made sense, even if he felt like he was being watched by God Himself (or rather, Niall Himself) for violating the one rule that ever mattered.

What didn’t make sense were the notebooks. Niall was a man who, once he got a taste of it, tended wildly towards the opulent. These notebooks were far from the showy objects Niall usually owned.

Curious, Ronan opened up one. His father’s sprawling and loopy handwriting filled the page.

_“Tonight, I dreamed of the ocean. There were giant waves, and they tried to crush me in their fingers. Everything I touched crumbled to sand and to sea in my hands. I couldn’t take anything with me when I woke up.”_

Did his father keep journals? Apparently the answer was yes. Ronan couldn’t seem to remember ever seeing him with one, but then, Ronan was never looking. He turned to another page.

_“Ronan dreams like I dream. He came to me this morning with a perfectly spherical stone that shifted colors in the light. He told me that ‘the forest gave it to him’. How can he remain unscathed as I am torn to bits each night?”_

Another page, this one with nothing on it but a few lines in the middle of the paper.

 _“These days I think I must know_  
_how Atlas felt, holding up the sky._  
_But my burden is the far heavier of the two,_  
_since my world contains a multitude of worlds within:_  
_a nesting doll of all of creation._  
_I strain, and I might soon collapse,_  
_sending each universe I hold scattering away  
_ _like so many dropped marbles.”_

A poem.

Ronan felt his chest get heavy, right along his sternum. Poems had to rhyme, though, or so he’d thought. Maybe they only had to rhyme until they didn’t. Golden dust motes seemed to freeze in the air around him. It had seemed impossible to forge words into structures worth saving, before now.

A poem as a way to paint feeling. It felt like a miracle. It felt like magic.

Ronan grabbed the stacks of notebooks and began flipping through them, trying to find more. More words, more of his thoughts, more of his fears in his father’s words.

He read them as though he were a man drowning and they were a life raft. He read them as though he’d been drowning and hadn’t known it until then.

The afternoon held a potential Ronan had previously only associated with dreaming. It felt like he could pull anything into reality if he could just find the right thing to say.

After all, if Niall passed along his dreaming, couldn’t he have passed on his poetry too?

* * *

In English that Monday, as fate would have it, they began a unit on poetry. Normally, Ronan couldn’t have given less of shit about whatever useless bit of literary analysis they were forced to do, especially since neither Gansey nor Adam was in his class period to make him care. This, however, came at just the opportune moment.

He knew nothing about poetry. He couldn’t piece together the words to give them sense because he didn’t think he knew the right ones yet.

Ronan couldn’t very well pretend to be an expert on poetry after reading his father’s. Niall Lynch was good at many things, but he often claimed more expertise than he ever had. Ronan’s father had a strange way of looking at things, and Ronan was tired of letting Niall’s beautiful lies define him.

If he were Gansey he would let his quest for knowledge consume him with excitement, and throw himself into every opportunity to learn more. If he were Adam, he’d spend hours in a dusty library taking meticulous notes, analyzing each comma and semicolon until he figured out some formula behind the writing.

But, for better or for worse, he was Ronan. And the Ronan method of research involved waiting until someone told you what you needed to know. Hence his sudden interest in English class.

Well, his theoretical sudden interest in English class. In practice, participation seemed much less vital.

“What’s a definition for love? Anyone?”

Their English teacher, a petite woman named Ms. Brown, was trying to elicit an answer from one of the students. She was getting a little bit desperate at this point, made so by the set of twenty one blank faced teenage boys staring back at her with no response.

“Come on. Anyone?”

Really, she should have known that this would happen. No one wanted to be a pretentious prick and try to be poetic about love.

“Anyone?”

Honestly, she was getting so repetitive and annoying that Ronan was about willing to put her out of her misery.

Ronan leaned back in his desk chair and said, “Love is a lit fireplace.”

One by one, the faces of his classmates turned to look at him, some with curiosity, some with confusion, and some with outright shock that he’d said something that wasn’t a dirty joke or a swear word. Even the teacher seemed surprised to hear from him.

A voice piped up from somewhere off to his right. “Why?”

Beginning to regret his decision to speak up, Ronan closed his eyes and replied, “Because it can warm you when you’re cold. It can comfort you when you’re afraid. It’s drowsy eyes and hot chocolate. It’s safety and it’s refuge. It’s a kiss on the forehead before bed.

“But it can also burn you if you’re careless. A fire left unattended can destroy a house. The flames may be beautiful, but they would not hesitate to bite you if you tried to reach out for them. Like fire, love is a danger we invite into our lives because it’s beautiful. We crave it, even if it can destroy us.”

The room was dead silent. Ronan opened his eyes to see the stunned faces of everyone. _I guess the thing about being Ronan Lynch is that nobody ever expects you to do anything good_ , Ronan thought bitterly.

The teacher seemed to snap out of whatever _that_ was first, and began handing out the group assignment for the day, some partner’s activity. That was fine with Ronan; he wouldn’t have a partner and wouldn’t have wanted one anyway.

But when Ms. Brown approached his desk, she didn’t hand him one of the papers. Instead, she asked to “speak with him outside, for a moment”. He really hoped this wasn’t another opportunity for a teacher to try and talk about feelings with him. He’d had quite enough of that when his dad died.

“Tell me Ronan, do you write poetry?” The teacher was a mousy woman, made even mousier when confronted by a snake.

But it seemed like this mouse was on a mission, and was not cowed at all by him.

Ronan gave a noncommittal shrug. “I might have tried writing a thing or two recently. It’s not like that’s what I spend all my time doing, though, so don’t go looking for any hidden depths.”

He tried to keep his tone biting, antagonistic. He had built his walls for a reason, and they needed to stay up.

Ms. Brown looked at him steadily. “You haven’t turned in any assignments this year so far, and you’re on track to repeat your senior year because of this class. So, I’m going to offer you a deal. You show me any poems you write, and I’ll replace a missing grade for each poem.”

Ronan could have scoffed at the unlikeliness that he of all people would write that many poems. He contained his disdain, however, and said only, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

* * *

The cafeteria was full, both with people and with noise. Ronan was staring at his overcooked green beans, almost personally offended by their blandness, and trying to come to a decision about Ms. Brown’s offer.

Should he take her offer? It’d be really convenient not to have to deal with any stupid analysis essays for the rest of the semester. It would also get Declan off his back about grades and spare him from Gansey’s mom looks, both giant pluses. But he really wasn’t sure he wanted to share any poems he’d written. The idea of sharing a poem seemed a little too personal for some busybody teacher to be poking her nose into.

Apparently, he must have been quieter than usual, because Gansey stopped in the middle of some story about Glendower they’d all heard a thousand times before to give Ronan a curious look.

“Is something up, Ronan? You’re acting more brooding than normal. Which, no offense, is saying something, even for you.”

Ronan twisted his leather bracelets between his fingers. “Something happened in English today, and I’ve been thinking about it.”

Adam turned to look at Ronan. “What happened?”

“Ms. Brown told me I could make up missing grades by writing poems for her. It’s really weird and dumb, and I’m not sure I want to do it.”

Gansey raised his eyebrows. “You should do it. It’s a great opportunity, and you really do need the grade boost. Honestly, I don’t think she’s even expecting that much out of you, so just try it and see what happens.”

On Ronan’s left side, Adam was eating his food and quietly listening to the conversation. He may have been quiet, but Ronan knew he was analyzing every piece of what had been said. Adam drummed his fingers idly against the table.

“What do you think, Adam?”

Adam finished chewing, and Ronan could almost see him formulating what he was going to say.Ronan almost expected a comment about his lack of poetic skills, or a note of surprise that he was actually even considering doing something for school without being forced to.

Instead, Adam gave him an appraising look and said, “I think you’ve already made up your mind, and that nothing I say is going to change your decision either way.”

Ronan felt his face relax into a lazy smirk. “I knew you were smart, Parrish.”

* * *

Writing a poem shouldn’t be so goddamn hard.

All you have to do is write down fancy words to say what you’re going to say: brain to pen to paper, then done. Simple.

Movies made this shit look way too easy. The main character sits in a café with their black coffee, they write their masterpiece while peppy montage music plays in the background. It takes three minutes of screen time, and everything is finished.

Real life was bullshit, though.

Ronan had been staring at a the walls of Monmouth for what felt like years, but in all actuality had only been a couple of hours. The blank pages were taunting him. A glance at the clock with a swirling face revealed it to be just past midnight.

It was that time of night when time got slippery, and Ronan lost track of it between blinks.

The blank page.

One forty five am.

Holding the pen.

Two thirty.

_Why can’t I write anything?_

Six fifteen.

Ronan needed to get ready for church soon if he was going to make it. He couldn’t afford to lose time anymore. He only owned one nice set of clothes that he could conceivably wear to church. Ronan remembered Adam’s dismay when he’d found out Ronan owned no nice clothes out of choice and not necessity.

It wasn’t like it was entirely voluntary. The person who’d gone with him to purchase the last set of nice clothes wasn’t around anymore, and he certainly wasn’t about to go by himself (or, God forbid, with Declan).

So Ronan had the same clothes he’d been wearing once a week for the past year and a half. The same clothes he’d worn to his father’s funeral.

Perhaps it was a little grim to be wearing clothes so steeped in death, but Ronan didn’t care. He was trying to air them out of the memory of lowering his father’s coffin into the ground.

The memory of the red Virginia clay under his fingernails—

_Oh._

_Oh shit._

Ronan picked up his pen and hastily scribbled while he still remembered the words. 

* * *

 _Wearing my best clothes, I plant my father in the ground._  
_The earth yawns wide with tombstone teeth,_  
_swallows around him with a sound like choking._  
  
_Dirt crusts my hands, lingers under my nails,_  
_the red clay caked and clotted like blood.  
_ _It looks bad, but you should see the other guy._

* * *

Today Ms. Brown was showing them a variety of love poems written by various skeevy poets in ye olden times trying to get into some girl’s pants. Ronan seriously doubted the legitimacy of the American education system if they were supposed to be analyzing the Renaissance equivalent of sexting for literary merit. It probably didn’t count as a love poem if you were just trying to get laid, and no amount of compliments on a girl’s rosy cheeks and golden hair was going to change that.

Poems were supposed to mean something, Ronan thought, not be used as a punchline in some dirty joke. This was ridiculous.

The class broke up into groups of four to analyze more poems by the same guy with the same weird name, and Ronan was finally left to his own devices. He pulled out the red leather-bound journal he’d been writing in so far. The paper was thick and creamy, and it made him feel like less of a fraud and more of a poet.

But right when he thought he was free for the class period, Ms. Brown called from the front of the room, “Ronan, could I speak with you?”

The way she’d said it made it feel less like a question, and more like a command. Ronan eased out his chair, red leather book in hand, and walked up to her desk at the front of the room.

“Have you got anything to show me, or do you have any questions I can answer?”

She was looking expectantly at him, so he placed the journal on her desk, the soft spine of it keeping the book open to the proper page. He figured he’d start with what she was expecting him to write about, so he’d shown her the one he’d written about his father.

Ms. Brown’s eyebrows were knitted when she first looked down at the paper, but they slowly drifted up her forehead and together as she read each successive line of the poem.

When she turned to speak with him, Ronan could tell that she was about to make some vague nicety about how sorry for his loss she was. It was something in the lines around her mouth, the lines people always got when they felt sorry for you.

What bullshit.

“Don’t try and talk to me about it. I’m sick and fucking tired of people trying to talk to me about it. Just write down a check mark or whatever, and move on.”

Ms. Brown looked for a moment like she was going to say something anyway, but then she looked away and began rummaging through a desk drawer. She pulled out a battered paperback book titled “Almanac of Poems”, and held it out to Ronan.

“It might help you out to read more poems to help you figure out how you want to write them. After all, the best way to improve your writing is to read.”

Ronan rolled his eyes, but took the book just the same.

* * *

 _The city breathes and I’m awake._  
_I hold entire universes behind my eyelids at night.  
_ _I could dream new constellations; my mind is astriferous._

* * *

After that first poem, it was like a dam had been broken. None of the “poems” he’d written amounted to much on their own, and certainly weren’t worth doing anything with, but to Ronan each fragmented line felt like a miraculous cure to a disease he hadn’t known he’d been infected with.

It was easier to feel less bottled up when he could vent to a red notebook. The pages were never going to judge him for his secrets, or make concerned expressions about his fears, or try to discover more about what he wasn’t saying.

He loved his friends (not that he’d tell them that), but sometimes their well meaning attempts at talking to him grated. There were some things he wasn’t ready to tell anyone anyone yet.

He had written few poems to show to his English teacher. It wasn’t like that had ever been the most important part of this anyway.

Ronan knew he had started this endeavor with the goal of connecting to his father, but he’d found something even better in the process. In his writing, he learned a little bit more about himself: what he loved, what he hated, what he found beautiful, what haunted him when no one else was around.

This was the most introspection Ronan had ever done, and it was surprisingly refreshing to be able to learn the mechanisms that drove him. It felt important to be able to examine his own thoughts with candor; he couldn’t hide things from himself, not anymore. 

* * *

 _I reserve for you the largest space in my heart,_  
_with an urge to give you my whole self:  
_ _Who I was, who I am, and who I ought to be._

* * *

They were the only people in Nino’s currently. That was fine with Ronan, because while Adam and Gansey talked about Glendower yet again, he held the book his teacher had given him in his right hand so he could continue eating while he read.

Blue was sitting down directly across from him, since she was still technically working despite the fact that there was no one else in the restaurant currently. Ronan could feel her eyes as she stared at him, and tried to avoid shifting uncomfortably.

“Are you reading a poetry book?”

Ronan read to the end of the page to give himself time to respond. Keeping his voice neutral and turning to the next page, he said, “Yes. I am.”

Blue seemed to have been expecting more of an argument than that, because all she did was give him an incredulous look with one raised eyebrow.

And that was the end of that topic for now. Gansey picked up the conversation once more and everything returned to normal.

Eventually, a crowd of Aglionby boys walked in and Blue had to leave the table to go work. Gansey decided that this would be a good time to gracefully make their exit. None of them wanted to bear the brunt of Blue’s anger with the assholes from school.

They loaded into the Pig and drove back to Monmouth Manufacturing. This was apparently going to be a homework day, since Adam came with them.

The three of them sat on the floor, books and notebooks spread around them. Adam and Gansey seemed to be doing calculus. Ronan continued reading his book.

A couple of hours later, Gansey’s phone rang, disturbing the studious silence of the room. Gansey glanced at the caller ID, looked guilty, then tried to hide his guilty expression as he rushed out of the room. If Gansey thought he was being inconspicuous, he was so wrong.

It was just Adam and Ronan in the room now.

“Hey. Adam. Would you mind reading over something for me?”

Casual. Keeping it casual.

Adam glanced up from his Latin homework. “Sure.”

When Ronan pulled out his red journal, he saw Adam’s eyebrows flick minutely upward in surprise. Ronan opened it to the correct page, and handed it over to Adam, who read it immediately. It wasn’t a long poem, so it couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds to read it. But Adam wasn’t doing anything.

Ronan waited impatiently for Adam to look up from the paper, for him to give some sort of response. But Adam’s expression didn’t change at all. There was no hint of what he was thinking. Finally, Adam sets down the paper and said, “This is a good one, Ronan. You’re doing much better now with your writing. You could definitely turn that one in.”

Ronan wanted to say something more, but Gansey had just walked back into the room. This was not a conversation he wanted to have around Gansey.

He could feel Adam’s contemplative stare for the rest of the evening, and ducked his shoulders to shield himself from it.

* * *

Ronan burst through the door to the English classroom after school the next day.“Do you have any more poems for me to read? What you’ve given me so far isn’t cutting it.”

Ms. Brown blinked at him, surprised by his abrupt arrival. “What kind of poems are you looking to read?”

 _Shit_. “These are all kind of boring and lame, and I, ah, want to read, um, some better love poems.”

Ronan said all his words quickly, and they were tumbling over each other in their haste to be out of his mouth. He could feel himself turning red and hated that he was embarrassed. Hated that he had to show he was embarrassed.

Ms. Brown didn’t make a big deal of his request, which Ronan was very thankful for. He didn’t think he could’ve handled it if she had.

She just gave him a stack of other books. If she was giving him weird looks out of the corner of her eye, Ronan couldn’t tell. He was avoiding all eye contact. Meeting her eyes would be an admission of something, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

* * *

The books were nice, for the most part.

Some of them were the ridiculously sappy variety one would expect from a book of love poems. But some of them felt so real. Ronan realized he had been going about the whole love poem thing entirely the wrong way.

You didn’t have to spout mushy declarations about your fondness for your true love eyes, or talk about how they are your whole world, your whole heart. It didn’t even matter if those were true. Ronan knew better than anyone that sometimes just saying the truth is not enough; it mattered how you said it.

It was easy to say you loved someone, but hard to say why, and harder still to _show_ them you love them.

Ronan wanted to show Adam everything. The weight of this secret was crushing Ronan more and more each day. It would be as much a release as a ruination to tell Adam how he felt.

Putting pen to paper, Ronan tried to capture what Adam was to him.

* * *

 _In my dreams, I am usually running._  
_Monsters nip at my heels,_  
_panting breath rushing past the back of my neck._  
_They are grotesque creatures,_  
_born of fear and love._  
_Sometimes they are merely deformed beasts,_  
_pitiful in their misshapenness._  
_Those are the least frightening._  
_Once, I dreamed a monster that had your face but wasn’t you._  
_His lips pulled around pointed teeth,_  
_but I could not run, out of fear and love.  
_ _I could never run._

* * *

It wasn’t enough.

Ronan had written pages and pages of unfinished and uninteresting poems. None of the words ever seemed to line up properly.

Lines of poetry ran through his dreams in dizzying spirals of English and Latin. He tried chasing after them with a butterfly net made of paper, but he could never seem to catch the ones that mattered.

His hands were covered in ink from trying to capture a flighty thought before it got lost.

This was the most important thing he had ever done and he CAN’T GET THE WORDS RIGHT.

Ronan knew distantly that he looked a bit deranged. He could see Gansey’s concerned looks and Adam’s careful avoidance of other people’s conflicts. If Ronan could have, _he’d_ have probably looked on in vague disdain at the mess he was right now.

He hadn’t felt a rising wave of panic like this since his father had died.

And so, when the final bell at school rang, Ronan went immediately to St. Agnes Church.

* * *

 _aspicio tu meus somniis saepe                                                                                                (I see you in my dreams often)_   
_tua imperfectiones pulchra propter se sunt tuus                                   (your imperfections beautiful because they are yours)_   
_tuus, non meus somnium                                                                                                                     (yours, not my dream)_   
_tu es primus pulchritudinem aspicebam sed non somniabam          (you are the first beautiful thing I saw but did not dream)_   
_et te no es meus                                                                                                                                   (and you are not mine)_   
_somnium quod iit in meus somnium, non ex                                                     (the dream that went in my dreams, not from)_   
_secretum inter somniator et somnios                                                            (the secret between the dreamer and the dreams)_

* * *

Ever an exercise in contradiction, Niall Lynch was both a devout Catholic and a prolific sinner. Ronan had long since stopped trying to pin down a complete picture of who his father was. It would have been impossible, anyways.

Niall sometimes wrote about his religion in his poems. Ronan could never understand the appeal of reiterating what he’d been told since birth. Jesus loves, Jesus saves, the Devil tempts into sin, and on and on in a never ending cycle of guilt and reparations. His father’s poems showed an unbreakable faith in God that was mystifying in its strength.

Religion had always been something complicated for Ronan. He believed in the Devil because he'd seen it with his own eyes, but he wasn't sure he believed in God. Church was an experience of family not an experience of piety. It was hard to feel devotion to God when Ronan had been told his whole life that God could never love someone like Ronan, that his identity was beyond forgiveness even from the person who forgave everyone.

Once he’d figured out he only hated himself because he thought he was supposed to, the idea of groveling for absolution seemed unappealing. It felt false, and Ronan hating lying.

Still, Ronan rolled prayers on his tongue like lozenges, hoping to taste some reprieve. It felt familiar and practiced, and he drew comfort from the familiarity of it more than the idea of salvation.

Salvation seemed an impossible goal to achieve, because God is never kind. God is incorruptible (and certainly not evil), but He would never be kind. The same God who made the world also spent considerable time destroying the people deemed unworthy, the people who were not God’s favorite.

Ronan had never been God’s favorite. 

* * *

 _There’s a man that wears a thorny crown,_  
_and he has my face._  
_Both of us are the sacrificial son,  
_ _born to bleed for someone else’s sins._

* * *

Still, he took refuge in the church sanctuary. The weight of tradition didn’t feel oppressive these days, like it had been in the past. Maybe it was easier to feel at home in your religion if you feel more at home in yourself.

The vaulted ceilings in the main nave of the church soared above him. It felt as though you could climb up the side of it to go meet God in Heaven for lunch. Niall’s faith was born in a place like this.

Niall was practically a god himself, and he filled the church more than the original God. His memory lingered like the scent of the incense from Mass, and this was both a relief and a vexation.

Ronan had no way of knowing what his father would have thought about him. No way of knowing whether his father would have hated him for who he loved. He would like to say he wouldn’t have cared about Niall’s opinion, but he didn’t lie, even to himself.

Admittedly, the idea of God is an appealing one. It seemed like it would be nice to know there was a familiar face looking out for you. It seemed nice to know you’re never alone.

Ronan had known what it was like to be alone, despite the best efforts of his friends to the contrary.

When Niall had died, Gansey had tried to fill the spaces in Ronan’s life, to draw him towards something purposeful. Ronan had allowed himself to be swept away in the tide of Gansey’s convictions. He’d had a lot of practice believing in things without thinking about them. It wasn’t lying if you never put what you felt to words, or so he’d thought then. Besides, it stopped some of the loneliness, so it seemed worth it.

Noah had just appeared in his life one day. Ronan hadn’t questioned it at the time. Once Noah had become a part of his life, it just seemed as though Noah had always been there. Nowadays, Ronan knew that might have been because Noah was a ghost. He figured Noah’s deadness didn’t matter much, though. Noah was always what you needed him to be, right when you needed him.

He had known Gansey and Noah the longest, and therefore had been more possessive of them.

Ronan remembered with a faint smile the first time Blue had come into his life. He’d resented her for the way that she became the instant object of affection for their little group. Blue had been prickly and Ronan had been waiting for everyone to get tired of her. What Ronan hadn’t been expecting was to find in Blue a mirror image of himself. When he wasn’t completely irritated with her, it was refreshing to be around someone who thought the same way he did. He’d gone from resenting her to being almost fond of her.

He remembered how the same thing had happened with Adam.

When Adam had started at Aglionby, everyone knew he was a scholarship student. Adam had kept his back straight and his face blank at all the whispered rude comments like he didn’t even hear them. It had been ridiculous, him pretending not to hear when everyone knew he had. Everyone kept trying to pick at him, trying to make him snap, so they could tell the administration with glee that the scholarship kid had no place here. Ronan had left him alone, though. Gansey hadn’t taken notice of Adam yet, and so Ronan didn’t think Adam was worth noticing.

When Gansey had finally spoken to Adam, he had decided instantly that Adam would be an excellent addition to their little group. Ronan vividly remembered that first lunch period where Gansey had invited Adam to come sit with them.

Everyone always had thought of Gansey as the golden boy, for as long as Ronan had known him. Those people obviously hadn’t ever met Adam.

Adam had looked like gold filigree: delicate, beautiful, and complicated. He’d been made of fine lines, each perfectly placed to trace out the shape of his eyelashes on his cheeks, the shape of his jawline and neck.

Ronan simply hadn’t known what to do about Adam, so he’d responded by striking out. Offense being good defense, and all that jazz.

It had taken a while to realize that he didn’t hate Adam.

No. It certainly wasn’t hate.

 

Ronan inhaled deeply, and his chest loosened. The smell of the church drew him back into the present. It was nice to be able to sit in a church, think about loving another boy, and not feel like he needs to go confess his sins.

It seemed to Ronan that he hadn’t really stopped feeling alone until he’d replaced one God for another.

The knot in his chest loosened further. Something about the moment seemed important, seemed like something he should tell Adam.

He drew out his notebook and pen, and began scratching out a poem a few words at a time.

* * *

 _I could learn to love God again if He looked like you._  
_You: born of the fine golden soil._  
_You: with the breath of heaven in your lungs._  
_Neither a fallen angel nor a favorite son,_  
_you walk the earth with magic in your fingertips._  
_Light bends around you like a crown or a halo._  
_I would give you all my prayers if you would take them._  
_You want no pity, but a prayer is not pity at all,  
_ _for only the divine receive them._

* * *

Ronan had been sitting in the church for a while, hammering out the last few kinks in his poem. The light streaming through the window had gotten dimmer and dimmer until it finally disappeared. He stood and stretched, stiff from sitting so long.

The poem was done. Finally.

Ronan left the main church and walked into the hallway that housed the church offices. At the very end of the dingy hallway was a rickety flight of wooden stairs that led up to Adam’s tiny apartment. The steps creaked as Ronan climbed up them.

The upper floor was completely dark save for the strip of light visible beneath Adam’s door. Gathering up all his resolve, Ronan knocked on the door, red notebook clenched tight in his hand. The hand he had knocked with was visibly shaking, so he shoved it into the pocket of his jacket.

Adam came to the door. He was wearing a threadbare pair of sweatpants and a hoodie washed to softness. His hair was disheveled. If Ronan hadn’t seen the light under the door, he’d have assumed he’d just woken Adam up.

“Want to go for a drive?”

Adam blinked blearily at Ronan, before going to get his shoes. Ronan quickly tore out the proper page of the journal while Adam’s back was turned.

They walked down to Ronan’s car in companionable silence. The night was crisp and beautiful. It was like waiting. It was like a held breath.

Adam sat in the passenger seat and drew his knees up to his chest, his eyes closed as he leaned back against the headrest. The fine veins beneath the skin of his eyelids were illuminated by the car lights.

Taking a deep breath, Ronan started the car, the humming of its engine soothing some of his anxiety. He started driving with no concrete idea of where he wanted to go. He just drove, towards the mountains, away from Henrietta.

Ronan cleared his throat. “Hey. Adam. I have a poem for you to read.”

Adam yawned hugely, turning to Ronan.

Ronan thrust the sheet of paper out to Adam. Adam had to turn on the overhead light in the BMW in order to see the writing on the page. Ronan forced himself to keep his eyes on the road, but he couldn’t help the way his hands kept tightening around the steering wheel. His knuckles were white.

Adam hadn’t said anything.

Ronan drove until they reached a scenic vista spot just above Henrietta in the foothills of the Appalachians. The lights of the town spread out below them like sporadic stars.

They were still sitting in silence. It was beginning to fill the car with its heaviness.

Just as Ronan breathed in to apologize for the poem, Adam suddenly burst out and said, “I wasn’t expecting it to be beautiful.”

He gave an embarrassed laugh as he continued, “I was expecting something less poetic and more inane. Now I feel bad.”

Adam reached into his pocket, and pulled out a folded and tattered sheet of notebook paper. When Ronan unfolded it, he saw the wavering letters of Adam’s terrible handwriting: ‘ _Roses are red, violets are blue. You’re an asshole, and I love you_.’

All of Ronan’s nerves were converted into hysterical laughter. Adam’s embarrassed giggles joined in, and then both of them were guffawing, gasping for air. Sudden relief and giddy feelings sustained the laughter for a long time.

Ronan’s hand clenched and unclenched around the gearshift with each burst of laughter. Finally, their laughter was beginning to subside, reduced to only the occasional giggle. Adam turned to look at him, and carefully placed his hand over Ronan’s on the gearshift.

They each still had faint smiles as they leaned in. Adam’s hand brushed lightly along Ronan’s jawline as their lips met.

Ronan fancied he could taste Adam’s grin in the kiss.

* * *

 _I want to rip the secrets from my veins, and have them drip from my fingertips like blood or like ink._  
_I want to spit them out after a fight, set them aflame with matches,  
tattoo them under my collarbones like birds, smear them across a pristine page._  
  
_I want to release them into the sky like a flock of doves or balloons, twirling and twisting until they soar out of sight._  
  
_I want to breathe them out like a whisper in the darkness just before dawn._  
_I want to press them into your hands and let you absolve me._  
  
_I want to give you the power to destroy me because I know you won’t use it._

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story actually got started with the first poem about Ronan's father. I was trying to write more poetry, and ended up writing from Ronan's POV in a poem. Then, my brain doing what it does, the idea became much larger than a single poem.
> 
> I feel like Ronan might have a complicated relationship with religion, and so I tried to write what that could look like. Apologies if that makes Ronan a little out of character. A lot of these thoughts about religion are my own, and I am shameless about self insertion when I write fanfic for the Raven Cycle. These characters are just too relatable, if we're being honest.  
> (Also, I headcanon Ronan as left handed, in case that scene in Nino's didn't make sense otherwise.)
> 
> I have other works in progress, but as I am currently in my first semester of college, they will be indefinitely delayed.  
> If you want to give me writing prompts or headcanons, feel free to message me on tumblr. I will be glad to hear from you.


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